Twenty Palaces (3 page)

Two camera men jumped out of their folding chairs and rushed across the street. Up ahead, a young woman was leading an older man up the front walk of Jon's house. I slowed, letting them go ahead the way I would watch a dog wander into a minefield. The cameramen stopped at the edge of the lawn and so did I, if only to avoid walking into their shots.

As the old man and his helper approached the wheelchair ramp on the porch, the front door opened and a dark-haired woman came out. What the hell. I drew the invitation from my pocket, took a deep breath, and started up the walk.

As I got near them, I heard the dark-haired woman say: "I'm sorry, but this is private property and you're trespassing. You'll have to leave." She sounded as if she'd said that so many times that she was sick of it. "Go home."

"This may be my last chance," the old man said. His voice was shaky and frail. "If I go, I might not be able to come back."

"We can't do anything for you."

"If I could just talk to the young man--"

"Please--"

"I have money."

"Please. Go home. Please."

The old man sagged, and the young woman holding his elbow helped him struggle back to the sidewalk. "I shouldn't have come," he said to her as he passed me. "I was ready for the end. I'd accepted my prognosis. Then I heard about this young man and... Lord, I was so much better off without this
hope.
"

The dark-haired woman turned to me, obviously about to give me the same speech, then she froze. "Oh. My. God. Ray Lilly."
 

I suddenly recognized her. "Bingo?"

"Don't you dare call me that."

"I'm sorry, um..." I blanked on her real name for a moment. "... Barbara. I didn't--"

"You should be sorry. Of course you show up now, of all times. Of course you do."

I held up the invitation. "Jon asked me to come here."

But she wasn't listening. She just kept right on talking. "And you're
sorry,
of all the things to say. After everything Jon's been through over the years while you've been who knows where, and you're here now and you're fucking sorry. I'll tell you what: You stay right there, okay? You stay right there. I'm going to go inside and get Dad's thirty ought-six, and then I'm going to show you how
sorry
feels."
 

So much for being invited. She marched up the stairs onto the porch, and I turned tail and ran. The cameras followed me, and I wanted to curse at them, smash them so they couldn't record me while I ran for my life. I didn't. I just sprinted for my bike, digging my key out of my pocket as I went.
 

The sick people cleared a space for me, but the reporters and their camera people closed in. I needed that bicycle; it was no good trying to get away from someone on foot, and since I was not not not going to boost a car on my second day in town, I would have to ride.
 

I slipped the key in the padlock as the reporters started shouting questions, their lights shining on me. I looked up at the tree; the news people had very kindly lit up the weird, disturbing shape carved into the bark, but it was just a strange meaningless shape to me. I opened the lock, ripping the chain from the bike and slinging it over my neck. Let them shout at me, I didn't care. As long as they stayed between me and Bingo, they were my best friends in the world.
 

Someone shouted "GUN!" and we all turned toward the Burrows' house. Jon was there on the porch, having just come out the front door, with others pushing through behind him. Bingo stepped to the side, a hunting rifle in her hands.
 

Mr. Bowling Ball sprinted across the lawn as fast as his bulk would allow, heading straight for the porch. He raised his hand, and Jon flinched, lifting his own left hand as a shield as he ducked low.

A camera man side-stepped in front of me, blocking my view. I heard a long string of pistol shots, coming very fast, then screams and shouts of terror. The crowd was too thick to fight through, so I yanked my bike away from the tree and ran with it to the back bumper of a news van, where I had a nearly-unobstructed view of the porch.

Jon was surrounded by people fretting over him. He clutched at his left hand, looking down at it, then stuffed it into his hip pocket. With his other hand, he began making unmistakable motions of reassurance, trying to convince people he was fine.
 

Mr. Bowling Ball lay sprawled on the grass, almost as if he was having a nice little nap. The two cops stalked toward him, their weapons drawn, but it was clear they'd already done everything to him that anyone was going to do.

I saw Bingo lean the rifle against the wall as she joined the others in the crowd around Jon. Still, she turned and scanned the crowd, while Jon did the same. I pushed the bicycle a little further along and rode away, wondering how I was going to convince Uncle Karl not to throw my ass out of the apartment once he found out I'd been less than 50 feet from a police shooting.
 

The ride from Jon's house to Aunt Theresa's had several uphill stretches. I ate my pride and walked the bike no less than three times, and I was ready to turn in and get some sleep when I rode down the alley and braked by the garage.
 

As I swung my leg off the bicycle, a van parked across the driveway suddenly started up. It startled the hell out of me, and I jumped back against the wall.
 

But the doors didn't swing open suddenly, and the engine didn't race. Instead, the driver slowly backed out into the alley. The night's excitement had made me jumpy as hell. If Arne and the others had seen me startle at the approach of a GMC Savana, they'd have laughed themselves sick.
 

I knew who it was even before the van turned and I looked into the driver's window. It was Jon Burrows. Somehow, at the party, I hadn't noticed that he'd gotten a haircut. "Ray!" he called as he rolled down his window. "Ray, you came!"

"Yeah, I did, and your sister ran me off with a gun." There were so many years between us, and I couldn't believe that was the first thing I said to him.
 

"Dude, I'm sorry. That was a misunderstanding."
 

There was more I wanted to say--being threatened with a gun isn't something I shake off lightly--but I couldn't. Not to him. "I have to put my bike away."

I turned my back and pushed the bike toward the garage. Behind me, I heard the van door open. "Dude!" Jon called to me, and I could hear him approaching. "Hey, man. Hey. Check this out."
 

I yanked open the access door at the back of the garage and shoved the bicycle inside, letting it crash against the wall. I was feeling threatened and reckless, as though Jon and his party invitation had brought a prison sentence to my door.
 

"Check this out," Jon said again. He held up a framed photo for me to take. I did. It showed the two of us as twelve-year-old boys, wearing the T-shirt and cap of sponsored intramural baseball teams. My cap was blue and his was orange, which surprised me because, as I remembered it, we'd been on the same team. "Remember the day this was taken? It was the league championship."

And suddenly I did remember. Jon had been pitching for the opposing team, and I'd hit a home run off him to win the game. It was the sort of play that you see in the movies, and I'd felt eight feet tall as I'd rounded the bases. But what I remembered most was that, even though I'd just beaten him and won the game, Jon had smiled at me. He had been proud of his friend.

The picture had been taken less than a year before That Day. "I do. I remember this." I handed him the photo and he took it with his left hand. "Hey, what happened to you?"
 

"Nothing to worry about." Jon held up his hand to show that his pinkie was gone at the bottom joint. The grin on his face was hard to read. I remembered, not even an hour before, that he'd raised that hand to shield himself from Mr. Bowling Ball. Even at that distance, it had seemed whole and complete to me, but that couldn't be right, because the injury wasn't bloody or fresh--the skin looked pinched closed like a kid's clay sculpture.
 

But I couldn't talk about that, because that was crazy.

CHAPTER THREE

"Ray, seriously, I'm sorry about Barbara," Jon said. "I totally forgot to tell her. That was all my fault."

"No," I said, and the word nearly stuck in my throat. "No, you don't have to apologize to me. I'm the one who--"

"It's not necessary," Jon said.
 

"No, I mean, I never apologized to you."

"Ray," Jon laughed. "You don't have to say it. I don't want you to, okay? I don't care. Look at me." He stepped back so I had a view of his whole body. "Everything is different now. Right?"
 

We both turned at the sound of the sliding door on the far side of the Savana rolling open. A few seconds later, a man and a woman stepped around the front fender. The woman was tall and lean, with short hair and thrift shop style. The man was slightly taller but built like a college linebacker. He looked wary and stood too close to the woman, as though she was his favorite toy and he was afraid someone else would wind her up.

"Hey," Jon said. "These are my friends, Echo and Payton. The party broke up, big surprise, so we're going to pick up my girlfriend and head out. Come with us, Ray. I want to celebrate with my old friend."

"Nobody else is going to be shot, are they?"

Echo laughed. Her voice was deeper than I'd expected. "That's why we're going out, to get away from the crazy."

"That's not the only reason." Jon pointed at me with the framed photo. "Come with us, dude. Please."

"Well, if you're going to say 'please'...." I started toward the van, following Payton and Echo around the front of the van while Jon climbed in the driver's door. Everyone was smiling, even Payton, who didn't seem to smile easily.
 

The only chairs in the back of the van were vinyl benches with the legs cut off. Payton and Echo sat together on the bench along the back doors, and I sat on the side-facing one. The floor was littered with burger wrappers. Gross. I looked over at Jon to tell him he needed a trash bag for his ride, and saw that he was sitting in a wheelchair.
 

"Oh, shit."
 

Jon turned toward me. "Oh hey, don't freak, Ray. I haven't had time to trade it in for one with gas and brake pedals. I mean, I don't need it now but someone else will."

"You think so?" Echo asked from her back seat. Jon laughed.
 

We rode in silence for quite a while. The front passenger seat was empty, but no one suggested I take it so I sat quietly while the radio played some kind of trip hop I'd never heard before.
 

After twenty minutes, the van slowed. "Oh you're kidding me," Jon said. He turned off the music.
 

I rolled to my feet to look out the windshield, but Echo was quicker. Looking over her shoulder, I could see a crowd on the sidewalk ahead, lit by a silent turning police light. They were holding handmade signs aloft, marching back and forth. The nearest sign read "Healing Not $tealing"; I didn't bother looking at the others.
 

There was a second, smaller group of people on the other side of a strip of yellow police tape, all huddled together as if for protection. They clustered near the entrance to the taped-off building; the sign above the door read H
ILLTOP
P
HYSICAL
T
HERAPY
C
ENTER
. One of the women threw her arms around an older woman nearby, then broke off from the group and ran under the tape to the van.
 

Echo leaned over and opened the passenger door for her. She jumped inside, a tiny woman about my age with a turned-up nose and a nest of tight brown curls. She leaned across the van and gave Jon a quick hello kiss. "They're shutting us down."

"Because of what we did?" Jon said, his voice loud with outrage.
 

Echo hugged her. "Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry." Jon took hold of her hand. I stepped back in case Payton wanted to join the hug, but the curly-haired woman broke free and looked me in the eye.
 

"You must be Ray. I'm Macy. Jon's said so much about you. I'm glad you've decided to come." There was something startling in the way she spoke to me, as though I was the most interesting thing in the world. She could have been a politician. "How was the party?"

Things got quiet after that. Payton had moved from the back bench to the side one, probably to be as close as possible to Echo. I moved to the back bench while Jon pulled into traffic and Echo began to describe what had happened on the lawn. I knelt, staring out the back window as we pulled away.

There, standing absolutely still in the midst of a crowd, was Wally King.
 

"Oh my God!" Macy shouted from the front of the car. I spun and saw Jon's face in the rear view mirror as he put the index finger of his left hand to his lips to quiet her, then winked. She glanced back at me, obviously upset but she fell silent.
 

Jon put his left hand back on the steering wheel. I settled onto the bench to look them over. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have any problem with a group of friends who were carefully not saying something in front of me. It's expected. But there were cops involved now, not to mention gunfire. I needed to be careful around these people.
 

Macy sighed. "Sweetie, would you mind?"

"Not at all," Echo answered. She took a small case from behind Jon's seat, opened it, and took out the two halves of a flute.
 

"Something happy!" Jon said as she put them together. "We're still celebrating. Nothing is going to stop this celebration." She began to play a happy tune that made me think of green meadows and guys with turned-up green shoes, even though every pot hole interrupted the music, ruining the effect. Macy grabbed a paper bag off the dashboard and dug out some damp-looking fries.